From corporate boardrooms to the headquarters of the city’s Democratic political campaigns, phone lines lighted up and strategy sessions were organized on Monday with a single mission in mind: stopping Eliot Spitzer.

The surprise decision by former Governor Spitzer to run for citywide office startled and galvanized the city’s political establishment, which worried aloud about handing the TV-savvy and self-financed candidate a new megaphone.

In candid conversations, some of the leaders expressed acute regret over their failure to swiftly undercut the mayoral campaign of former Representative Anthony D. Weiner, another scandal-scarred candidate for citywide office, and said they would not make the same mistake twice.

Behind the scenes, they began to lay out a blueprint for undermining Mr. Spitzer’s bid for comptroller, the city’s third-highest elected office, and for propping up his lesser-known Democratic rival, Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president.

They quickly zeroed in on what they claimed were Mr. Spitzer’s vulnerabilities: an out-of-control ego; his lawbreaking patronization of prostitutes, which led to his resignation as governor in 2008; and his combative, go-it-alone style.

Strikingly, Democratic leaders drew parallels between Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Weiner, trying to lump them together as two wayward men obsessed with reclaiming power and unworthy of redemption, in a direct appeal to women voters who may decide the races.

“For me the question with both Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer is what have they been doing to earn this second chance?” asked Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker and a Democratic candidate for mayor. She said she had seen little that would “redeem themselves from their selfish behavior.”

Photo

Former Gov. Eliot Spitzer had no trouble attracting attention on his first day on the trail.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Business leaders leapt into the ruckus, finding common cause with organized labor as they described Mr. Spitzer as ill-suited to the job of managing the city’s multibillion-dollar pension system and policing city spending.

Such a post, said Kathryn S. Wylde, the head of the Partnership for New York City, made up mainly of real estate, Wall Street and insurance firms, requires intense collaboration and diplomacy with the mayor’s office, the business community and municipal labor unions.

“The tone of the Spitzer announcement and history suggest that’s not the way he would approach the job,” she said in an interview.

In the corridors of finance, executives made little secret of their dismay at the thought of Mr. Spitzer, an often zealous adversary of Wall Street, assuming a job with some authority over the industry. Robert T. Zito, the founder of a brand consulting firm and a former executive at the New York Stock Exchange, which was a relentless target of Mr. Spitzer’s ire over executive pay, put it bluntly: “I would love to see his opponent win.”

Those involved in and briefed about the strategy discussions raised the possibility of organizing a super PAC to counter Mr. Spitzer’s self-financed campaign.

Eyes turned to Mr. Spitzer’s most fervent critics on Wall Street, like the billionaire Kenneth G. Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot and a former director of the New York Stock Exchange, who had relished the governor’s downfall.

According to a person told of his plans, Mr. Langone was mulling independent campaign expenditures against Mr. Spitzer. Mr. Langone was traveling in Europe and an aide said he was unavailable to talk.

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Another Democratic candidate for comptroller, Scott M. Stringer, campaigned with his wife, Elyse Buxbaum.Credit
Damon Winter/The New York Times

Mr. Spitzer, in an interview, appeared to have anticipated the attacks, especially from Wall Street, and sought to turn them to his advantage, by portraying himself as a warrior for regular people.

“When I was attorney general, I made some powerful enemies,” he said. “But I also made a lot of friends,” which he described as the “real people” he had fought for.

The fierce debate about how to deny Mr. Spitzer a place in city government unfolded as he hit the campaign trail for the first time in five years, displaying the kind of studied discipline that characterized his previous runs for office.

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Standing on the searing sidewalks of Union Square for over an hour, with sweat dripping down his face onto a pinstriped suit, Mr. Spitzer maintained a stoic smile as he endured loud hecklers and received unsolicited compliments.

An older woman in a straw hat leaned in to the giant scrum forming around Mr. Spitzer and declared: “His wife and his daughters understand. Why shouldn’t we?” A few feet away, a man in a blue polo shirt castigated Mr. Spitzer, “You slept with hookers, and you lied and cheated on your family.”

It appeared that the muscle for the anti-Spitzer operation might emerge from the city’s labor unions, which view Mr. Stringer as a reliable ally, and are wary of the less predictable Mr. Spitzer, who has not hesitated to confront them in the past.

Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said all options — including tapping its own campaign funds for television ads — were under consideration. “We’re going to make sure that we do everything in our power to make sure Scott is the next comptroller,” he said. “Weiner has kind of been given a free pass.”

Video

Spitzer Seeks Signatures for Comptroller

Eliot Spitzer, the former governor of New York, faced reporters in Union Square on Monday as he began collecting the 3,750 signatures he will need by Thursday to enter the race for city comptroller.

By Stephen Farrell, Erica Berenstein and Abe Sater on Publish Date July 8, 2013.
by Damon Winter/The New York Times.
Watch in Times Video »

“He is running to clear his name, to build a public persona again,” said Héctor J. Figueroa, president of 32BJ, the city union of janitors and doormen, which has endorsed Mr. Stringer. He called the comptroller’s office “the wrong position” for Mr. Spitzer.

Mr. Stringer, who had expected a smooth path to the Democratic nomination for comptroller, moved quickly on Monday to rally his most high-profile campaign supporters and surrogates, many of them women. Appearing alongside his wife on the Upper West Side, he dismissed reporters’ questions about whether Mr. Spitzer should be forgiven.

“This isn’t mea culpa time,” he said. “I’m not getting into all that.”

One of Mr. Stringer’s supporters, Gloria Steinem, the feminist writer, trumpeted Mr. Stringer’s record on issues like domestic violence and questioned Mr. Spitzer’s sudden yearning to be comptroller. “This is the target of opportunity,” she said. “I would be surprised to learn that he had ever in his life expressed a wish to be comptroller.”

There were signs that Mr. Spitzer’s opponents had already succeeded in complicating his plans.

According to people close to him, Neal Kwatra, a top city political strategist who had voluntarily helped orchestrate the rollout of Mr. Spitzer’s campaign, decided to cut his ties with the campaign amid signs that some of his clients, including the city’s Hotel Trades Council, which is backing Mr. Stringer, were cool to the Spitzer candidacy. Mr. Kwatra declined to comment.

Mr. Spitzer insisted throughout the day that he was happy to have returned to the hurly-burly, even as he found himself unable to move at times in the crush of cameras and reporters. “It’s exciting,” he said. “It’s fun.”

Whatever the ultimate outcome of his campaign, it clearly had an immediate effect on Mr. Weiner. At a news conference he called to talk about bike policy, Mr. Weiner faced seemingly nonstop questions about the former governor.

Asked if Mr. Spitzer had stolen some of the political limelight, Mr. Weiner replied, “Clearly, it’s shifted away.”

Correction: July 9, 2013

An earlier version of this article misstated the name of an organization of real estate, Wall Street and insurance firms. It is the Partnership for New York City, not the New York City Partnership.